PROBASHI- A Cultural News Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 | Page 31

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Yamuna Jiye Abiyaan

Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan- Not Going with the Flow
Choosing to save a river is more often an act of passion than of careful calculation. You make the choice because the river
has touched your life in an intimate and irreversible way, because you are unwilling to accept its loss. — (David
Bolling, How to Save a River: Handbook for Citizen Action). And this act of passion is visible in the Yamuna Baachao
Ahiyaan, a peoples’ movement to save the river. With its origin in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, by the time Yamuna
leaves Delhi, it is in pitiable state carrying sewerage, muck and garbage. If that is not all, the greed of man to encroach the
river’s flood plain for commercial gains (many a times couched in development jargon) means that the flora and fauna in
the Yamuna flood plain is under threat of being lost forever to mankind. The Uttarakhand disaster should be a wakeup call,
all the rivers including Yamuna were in spate, taking along with it manmade structures on its banks. This might get
repeated again, and who knows this time it might happen in the backyard of the nation’s capital- Delhi. Probashi met Shri
Manoj Kumar Mishra, Convenor, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, and learnt how he and his associates are trying to avert this
catastrophe. .

It was the year 2007. The location was
next to the DND Flyover on the
western bank of the river Yamuna. An
agreement had been signed between
the players- a Dubai based firm
e4entertainment, the Times of India
Group and Delhi Tourism. The Times
Global Village as it was called was
meant to be a month long event of
shopping extravaganza every year for
the next ten y